Wiltshire Police is ‘struggling to cope with demand’ in some areas of the county, it has been revealed.
It’s claimed that during numerous shifts in recent weeks, the policing team that covers Chippenham, Calne and Corsham had just two local units available to respond to emergency calls.
Despite the team looking after a population of around 70,000 people, urgent taskings regularly stack up as the small number of frontline officers deal with the most serious of incidents first.
Speaking to Wiltshire 999s anonymously, an inside source told of how all too often officers are stretched to the max – rushing from job to job as more and more 999 taskings come in.
They said: “Unfortunately some response teams are run ragged. It’s not a new problem, officers have been struggling to cope with the amount of immediate and priory calls coming in due to staff shortages for some time.
“Not only are officers expected to respond to ongoing incidents, but there are other tasks to undertake too – like investigating crime, taking statements from victims or arresting and interviewing suspects.
“Most of the time we’re running about from job to job without a break. Logs are left sometimes unanswered for significant periods of time; sometimes there are only two units on shift.”
The source says that some of the officers are unable to work alone, having been recruited only recently. During tutorship, they must shadow their assigned qualified officer at all times.
Wiltshire Police accepts that it is facing “staffing challenges” within the local response teams, but said that neighbourhood policing resources could be utilised where necessary – as well as specialist teams like armed response.
“Whilst on occasion, we face staffing challenges in our response teams, we are able to call on neighbourhood resources to help us meet extra demand”, Chippenham inspector Pete Foster said.
” If required, we are able to call on the support of our colleagues in Specialist Operations. In addition, local inspectors are also able to reallocate officers from elsewhere in the county should that be necessary”, he continued.
“We are actively recruiting for more police officers which will, of course, help address capacity issues In the longer term.”
The Police and Crime Commission for Wiltshire Police, Philip Wilkinson, told Wiltshire 999s that a new policing structure being implemented will have a positive effect.
He said: “Both Wiltshire Police and I recognise there have been staffing issues, in terms of numbers and stability, within neighbourhood teams across the county.
“This stems from the fact although Wiltshire Police has been recruiting hard to increase its numbers it then takes time for that to be seen in real terms in our communities.
“An increase to officer numbers, coupled with a new structure which allows a local Inspector to ‘own’ their resources so they can redirect effort to deal effectively with issues, should start to have a significant effect. However, this does depend on the actual numbers in a team at any one time.
“I will be discussing these particular instances with Chief Constable Roper but I know she is very alive to the issues being faced in our neighbourhood teams and is working with her Chief Officers to address this.”
